Many worry about impact on marine life

Dolphins jump in front of the Chilean submarine SS-21 Simpson as it leaves the basin of Naval Station Mayport Thursday, February 7, 2013 in Jacksonville, Florida. The Simpson was departing after a three-month deployment to Mayport for training.

Oil companies and environmentalists are going head-to-head after the federal government decided last week to allow oil exploration off the East Coast of the U.S., including off Northeast Florida’s shores.

Members of Jacksonville’s environmental community and fishing industry are concerned the search itself, as well as the drilling that could follow, will kill or injure dolphins, whales, fish and other aquatic species.

The U.S. Department of Interior decided July 18 to allow companies to use seismic air guns to check for oil and gas pockets under the ocean floor.

The approval changed a 30-year ban against searching for oil and gas along sections of the East Coast, which is the first stage in offshore oil drilling.

U.S. oil companies say testing for gas and oil is essential to help the U.S. move toward fuel independence. The American Petroleum Institute said allowing testing from Delaware Bay to Cape Canaveral would bring jobs to the East Coast. The oil lobbying group hopes surveying could start as soon as next spring.

Drilling for oil wouldn’t be possible for about a decade since it takes about five years to finish the testing and interpret the data, as well as several more years to build the oil rigs, said Rick Mullaney, director of the Jacksonville University Public Policy Institute.

Florida politicians, including Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown, sent the federal government letters opposing the measure, saying the decision could harm Jacksonville’s tourism and fishing industries.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., also spoke out against the decision.

“Drilling off Florida’s Atlantic coast is unwise and impractical,” Nelson said in a statement. “It could interfere with the military operations off of Jacksonville and launch activities around the Kennedy Space Center off of Cape Canaveral, not to mention the environmental hazard that drilling would pose.”

A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said he was still reviewing the final decision and didn’t have a statement yet.

Thousands of whales and dolphins could be deafened or killed by the air guns used to do the search, the Department of Interior estimated. Right whales and other rare whales could also be affected, although an area of Northeast Florida’s waters will be closed from Nov. 15 to April 15 to surveyors during the North Atlantic right whale’s breeding season.

To find oil and gas under the ocean floor, surveyors use sound waves to create a map of any pockets and caverns in the rock, said John Jaeger, University of Florida geology professor. The surveyors use seismic air guns, which shoot sound waves through the water and bounce back to equipment. The coastal East Coast was last surveyed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, so the information is too outdated to be useful to petroleum companies, Jaeger said.

The seismic air guns blast sound waves that are much louder than a jet plane, which can kill and injure animals, said Quinton White, executive director of the Jacksonville University Marine Science Research Institute. He said mammals nearby could be deafened, fish swim bladders could be burst and single-celled organisms critical to the ecosystem could burst from the powerful sound waves.

The intensity of the sound from the seismic air guns will reach up to 230 decibels, which is estimated by environmental groups to be 100,000 times louder than a jet plane.

A report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management stated sea turtles might be more affected by the low-frequency noise than dolphins or whales.

Farther away, animals can be disoriented by the noise. White said he’s concerned the noise from the air guns could confuse whales, dolphins and sea turtles, causing them to stray from their normal migration paths and beach themselves or die of starvation in the ocean.

White also said the testing could bother Northeast Florida’s beach visitors if testing is allowed close enough to shore.

“It’s going to sound like you have cannons going off offshore,” he said.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management stated in its environmental impact study there are guidelines to prevent too many animals from being hurt or killed by the testing. Surveyors will be required to keep watch for any mammals such as whales or dolphins that surface for air, and they’ll have to stop testing until those animals swim far enough away. The report does contend that some animals will be hurt or killed because of the testing.

Northeast Florida’s port and Coast Guard operations aren’t expected to be affected by the search for oil and gas.

Coast Guard Commander Alisa Praskovich at Mayport Naval Station said the sound waves used by the testing equipment won’t interfere with the equipment used by the Coast Guard and commercial vessels that go into JaxPort. The only problem would be additional water traffic.

Requests to the U.S. Navy and NASA about potential impacts were not returned by press time.

Note to fishermen: think how easy fishing will be. Just wait for some explosions and then put a big net on the back of the boat. You'll "catch" dead or dying flounder, jack, sheep, dolphins, whales all in one swoop.

Note to westside con: there's this thing called a food chain. Your car is not in it.